This invention is in the field of rotary lawn mowers and particularly rotary lawn mowers with auxiliary power units. Lawn mowers have been designed for the cutting of long stretches of lawn; however, additional tools, such as trimmers, are required for trimming the grass around trees, rocks and other objects as well as along the edge of a sidewalk or other pavement. Thus, once the lawn is cut with a lawn mower, it is necessary to obtain and use another tool for the final trimming of the lawn. Attempts have been made at designing a combined lawn mower and trimmer thereby allowing the operator to trim the lawn without the necessity of obtaining a separate tool located remotely from the lawn mower. For example, trimmer attachments for lawn mowers are shown in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,192,693, 3,665,691 and 3,197,950. The attachments are typically connected to the bottom end of the lawn mower crankshaft by a pulley/belt combination or various types of gears and levers. The attachements typically have to be installed on the lawn mower during the original manufacture of the lawn mower due to the relatively complex connection with the crankshaft bottom end. A more recent combined lawn mower is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,690,384 which likewise includes a rear-mounted edger powered through a belt/pulley combination connected to the bottom end of the lawn mower crankshaft. A side-mounted edger is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,691,264 which is powered by a series of gears driven by an engine. All of the aforementioned devices do not allow the operator to trim the grass at a location away from the lawn mower. In other words, the prior devices include trimmers which are mounted to the lawn mower and as a result the lawn mower must be pushed around the tree or other such object. In many cases, sufficient space is not available to allow movement of the lawn mower around the object. It is therefore desirable to provide a trimmer which is powered by the lawn mower engine but which may be moved away from the lawn mower a sufficient distance to allow trimming without requiring movement of the lawn mower. In addition, it is desirable to power the auxiliary trimmer by the lawn mower engine in such a manner that the trimmer may be added onto the lawn mower other than at the time of original manufacture. Disclosed herein is an auxiliary trimmer which fulfills both of the aforementioned objectives.
In addition to providing an auxiliary trimmer for a lawn mower, it is desirable to provide a spray unit powered by the lawn mower which may be used for spraying insecticides, fertilizers and the like. Auxiliary spray units mounted to lawn mowers are disclosed in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,081,004 and 3,247,655. It is desirable to provide a drive system which can be used to power not only the previously mentioned trimmers but also the spray units without requiring a separate drive unit for the spray unit and trimmer. Disclosed herein is such a drive system.